In a few years someone should dig up his bones and routinely desecrate them in the initiation rite of a hedonistic secret society.

This thread resembles when evolutionary psychology pops up on metafilter and the like. There are an awful lot of people who seem to be under the impression that their beliefs and biases stem from some sort of Platonic ideal which they have perceived rightly and their enemies are too stupid to understand.

Politics isn't about what you believe, it is where your loyalties lie. And the Republicans are good at pushing all the right buttons to trigger loyalty for themselves and hatred for their enemies.

And yes, the freepers will try to level that accusation at liberals, which is valid, more or less. I mean, think about it: the Republican "enemy" is a caricature, a wimpy hippy who wants to take your money and give it welfare queens. The Democratic "enemy" is the President of the United States, whose policies have weakened our nation and destroyed all our moral credibility.

There is just something unbalanced about that, but I can't put my finger on it...

Taking time out for your children for one thing. Affirming it as a lifestyle choice equal to accomplishing something the rest of the world cares about is a fantasy to build up the self esteem of those who never learned a trade.

"Women who choose to raise children are contributing no less to the world than women who work in the IT field."

But they are contributing less than women who work in the IT field and raise children.

Thr r wmn whs nly mbtn s t mrry nd hv bbs. Ths wmn r dcl nd ctlly blv n th gndr strtyps thy rnfrc. I have an equal contempt for them as I do the chauvinists who drive women out of my field. Those kind of people deserve each other, but it is a shame the rest of us have to work with half of them.

(Thankfully there is a correlation between chauvinism and incompetence, as the former masks the insecurity over the latter, so the troglodytes tend to stay on the bottom rungs of any organization. But still, I knew their type in college, and heard the horrible stories from my female friends. And sadly, I don't think any of them still work in IT.)

ESP. Didn't you see Ghostbusters?

Isn't terrorism just a pretext anyway?

These people have had a hard-on for squashing sousveillance before 9/11, before Steve Mann even coined the word. Only now they can use terrorism to cloak the patent absurdity of banning photography at tourist landmarks, because when people accept limitations to their rights in a casual context, they're more willing to dismiss the rights of "troublemakers" when there are real stakes involved.

Or, in other words, "You have to be fingerprinted! Everyone has to be fingerprinted!"

What's wrong with destroying hypocrites? Politicians should live in fear of the same scrutiny their intelligence services are applying to the public at large. They shouldn't be able to take a dump without the press knowing about it.

If I can't photograph a landmark, they can't bang a prostitute. Cry more, emo Spitzer.

What is far more insidious is the echo chamber that manufactures controversies out of nothing. At least a sex scandal requires evidence and some reasonably incontrovertible moral failing.

How did I get here? What is this place?

I'm scared!

Good lord, don't tell the whiners about ganguro girls.

Besides, the Michael Jackson is wearing white makeup, so it all evens out in the end.

When dealing with practitioners of a caste system, an American should assume the status of the highest caste, and consider the others as members of the lowest caste. We should encode that into our laws, kind of like how the US flag can't be flown below any other.

And yet, the liberals keep trying to take our guns away. Thanks, guys, that really helps.

Hooray! Beatings for everyone!

I've been wondering, is there some kind of ideology or top-down influence causing this war of photography?

Why must people cheapen the universe by making a religion out of it?

Awe is not "spirituality". And faith is not a different kind of knowledge, faith is wish-fulfilling conclusions drawn from complete ignorance.

The Mexican government did it first: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4789144.stm

Don't you people know that women are property who exist for two mutually exclusive purposes? If she isn't a whore for fun, she is livestock to produce heirs. It's the same the world over, from Gambian villages to Republican mansions. You can't fight human nature...

Unless you use human nature. We should emphasize the weakness and inferiority of men who are so incapable of satisfying their women that they must mutilate them to never know what they're missing.

Why stop at animals? A baby doll thus converted would be a better conversation starter than a coat rack.

(the horror, let me you show you it)

When is it better to protest, when no one cares, or when the entire world is paying attention?

Wait, AGIES, do you think this is still about the city selection? And as a done deal, people should sit down and STFU?

That isn't being an asshole, that is being meek.

The Olympics has always been political. It is a marketing campaign run with dictatorial control and ruthlessness, and when it isn't selling ideology, it's selling sugar water and fast food.

And good lord, what is with the China appeasers? As an American, I have no problem with people hating America. I rather hate it myself. I hate our government for pretty much the same reasons I hate the Chinese government.

But I have to question the intelligence and self respect (or national allegiance) of anyone who whines about neutrality and considers the superpowers equivalent. Tell me, would you rather have Chinese military bases in Western Europe?

It's peace in our time all over again.

#3 - Huh? I don't see the difference. They both lived to stir shit up, and both died young because of it.

Sorry, Leafo, but you made a trollish post, even if you didn't intend to, so I responded in kind. Let me make the pattern obvious:

Your Group categorically holds beliefs X, Y, Z to be true.

Yet Bad Person was thwarted in contradiction to X, Y, and Z. Does X, Y, and Z apply to you but not Bad Person?

Do you support X, Y and Z for Bad Person, or are you hypocrites?

The polite response is that you are constructing a false dichotomy, and to answer it on those terms would only serve to undermine people's respect for civil liberties. There is no conflict between the law and your rights because "due process" is supposed to ensure they are respected. (Yeah, only in an ideal world, but it was a philosophical question.) We should not need to gut our civil liberties to catch the "bad guys".

In the drug example, it is the law that is unjust, not the technique used to find and punish those who break it. How would it be any different than if they used a credit card, and so the police get the name of the account holder?

The problem with blanket surveillance is that it is a violation of privacy (the innocent are subjected to the same scrutiny as the criminal) and that it lends itself to the abuse of the law as a form of political intimidation and retribution. Getting specific personal information on a known lawbreaker is not surveillance.

Civil liberties are not boundaries to the law, they are part of the law. They are boundaries to those who enforce it (to prevent abuse), and to those who create it (to prevent laws which contradict our rights).

Forensic investigation is not surveillance, and presumably the cops had a legitimate warrant before the ISP gave up their identities. Anonymity is not privacy, and anonymity is a civil liberty only in specific contexts (eg. protecting whistleblowers and critics).

What am I saying? My IP address is recorded in teh server logs! I have to create an account to post to BoingBoing! Oh noes! Teh internets are run by teh Man!

I'm curious about where people play dumb, I mean, curious in the attempt to frame some stupid right-wing talking point. Is intelligence and nuance only reserved for your enemies, or does it depend on the circumstances?

re: 3/27 cover

His first mistake was spreading malicious rumors. His last mistake was accepting her invitation to "prove it".

/please don't ban me :-)

Is there some kind of rivalry between publishing houses that prompts a tit-for-tat in genre books?

The Space Opera Renaissance edited by Hartwell and Cramer came out about the same time, and given that they also edit the Year's Best SF series (as opposed to Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction), I wondered if one prompted the creation of the other.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you, I bought both and always buy both yearly anthologies. I just think it's funny that there would be some sort of Coke vs. Pepsi war in science fiction.

We should all become zealot fanboys and root for one or the other and death to the infidels and all that.

Empathy is an instinct, it is only necessary for intelligence in the sense that modeling the behavior of others is necessary to predict their actions.

If I explained wtf I'm talking about it would be much longer than Kelly's little essay. I'll try to summarize -

Self and other, autonomy and control. What distinguishes the individual from the culture that informs everything that person knows. What are the boundaries of the myriad loyalties that define that person's identity. How is all this affected by the technological arms race between individualists and authoritarians. What is going to happen now that geography is no longer a hindrance to the spread of culture, and how it determines a person's ethos and their hierarchy of loyalties. Will always-on, instant communication and the breakdown of privacy facilitate a "hive mind", and will that increase freedom by heightening empathy, or decrease it by creating new avenues of coercive conformity. And how does all this come together when paranoid governments keep going bug-fuck crazy over real and imagined terrorist threats, increasingly scarce resources, and the rise of new economies at the expense of failing superpowers?

Our identity politics are going to be far more material, and far more traditional, than they have been in the recent past. What's going to blow the minds of people like Kelly is just how readily people accept radical technology when it gives them an advantage in a world where it seems like enemies are everywhere.

Someone tell this guy that postmodernism is dead and that crit-lit naval-gazers got bored with calling themselves cyborgs in the Nineties.

The kid screaming "No you have to be fingerprinted! Everybody has to be fingerprinted!" in Cory's recent Disneyland post is a harbinger of the real conflict that will define what it means to be human.

Wait, so does this mean Starbuck is secretly Six's wife?

Hawt hawt hawt!

Geezus. If some drunk runs off the road and creams a baby stroller, the guns-n-god crowd would be out for blood.

But the same degree of lethal incompetence occurs with people in full control of their rational faculties, following a pattern of incompetence that has already resulted in other deaths, and we get whiners complaining about the sarcasm and how anecdotes shouldn't dictate policy.

You right-wingers are fucking tools. You're no better than the drones who killed this baby.

Is Songe a Scientologist? BattyMcDougall?

Perhaps some McCarthy-style hearings are in order.

I don't think anyone is particularly concerned about unbrainwashing those duped into the cult. There is little point in saving the gullible. I mean sure, it might have saved people like Lisa McPherson, but holding the cult accountable for its crimes is far more likely to improve the situation of its members.

No, the point of the protests is to demonstrate to the cult's leadership that the Internet will not be intimidated, and to bring attention to them that isn't filtered through publicists and the Hollywood media machine.

Nobody gets offended when Cory says "Canadian". Why? 'Cause he's Canadian!

ZOMG, someone adheres to a competing fashion subculture! Quick, let us ridicule him to make ourselves feel bigger!

What we need to do is to stop using identifiers as secret keys.

And if we put the liability of identity theft squarely on the institutions that fall for it, then this problem with fix itself. It's too easy to pass the buck now.

(Why is there no "post" button on the preview page?)

So... did ya keep 'em?

People, don't be so quick to dismiss torture. Think of the trolls in this thread. Now think of them armed with a bomb. That's a terrorist.

Not so immoral, now, is it?

I can't believe it's vegetable oil saturated by a nickel catalyst!

No, really. Science is like magic.

Why is noteworthy that you can read a text file on the iPhone?

Apple should sell these with their logo.

I read that "Smurf cover versions"... now I'm disappointed.